


Because I could not stop for Death

by prosodiical



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Percival Graves is Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-23 12:05:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12507012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/pseuds/prosodiical
Summary: ...he kindly stopped for me.Newt can't die yet. Not today. And Death, or perhaps the man underneath, lets him go.





	Because I could not stop for Death

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this](https://fantasticbeastsprompts.tumblr.com/post/166787878318/newt-should-have-died-many-times-over-during-his) lovely prompt at the Fantastic Beasts Prompt tumblr:
>
>> Newt should have died many times over during his travels and adventures. But every time Death comes for him Newt just says "nope" and goes on living. And Death (Graves?) can't do much about it because he's never had someone just look him in the eyes and say "No thank you." then move on. Sure, people have begged, bribed, cried. But never plain up told him "Not today."
> 
>   
> Slightly cleaned up from my initial post on [tumblr](https://prosodiical.tumblr.com/post/166814918083/newt-should-have-died-many-times-over-during-his). 

The first time doesn’t count, Newt’s always heard. One, for witches and wizards; one, for the magic that runs through their veins. So when the maddened Jarvey jumps at him, he isn’t worried. He just closes his eyes, and hopes it won’t be blamed.

When he opens them again, there’s a man by the door. He’s older than Newt, but in a strange, timeless way; he could be twenty, or two hundred, or as old as the universe itself. But to Newt he’s handsome, human, tired eyes and a slightly sad quirk to his smile, and Newt bites his lip and gives him a tentative smile.

“Hello. I’m sorry, I can’t come with you today.”

“You… can’t come today?”

“No,” Newt says, and “I’m sorry,” again. “I’m not sure if you saw, but I can’t let that Jarvey be hurt - it wasn’t its fault at all. And…”

His body lies prone on the floor. Newt steps over it as Leta appears at the door: her face goes white and she pulls out her wand, casting as though it’ll make any difference at all. Newt says, “No. I can’t come with you. Not today.”

The man says, “Newton Scamander.”

“Please,” Newt says, “call me Newt.”

He sets his hand over his body’s own, the one Leta is clutching as she looks up to the jarvey, her eyes completely dry. Newt glances at the man again, who’s studying him with a slight furrow between his eyebrows, and closes his eyes.

The man’s gone when he opens them again. Newt’s back in time to save the jarvey from Leta’s curse, though not in time to stop blame from being laid, but it’s all right. He should have been more careful. It was a bad idea, bringing it into the castle, and he’s very fortunate no one got seriously hurt, and he says all of this to Headmaster Black with an entirely straight face.

* * *

The second time, it’s Newt’s own fault; a stupid misstep, a dragon afraid. He wakes surrounded by flame and he steps toward her, palms empty and hands outstretched, aching with empathy as she roars and shakes her head, her eyes mad and temper wild at the welts risen on her skin from metal chains.

She doesn’t see him, of course. The man standing beside her says, “Newton Scamander.”

“I really do prefer Newt,” Newt says. “Hello. I would say it’s good to see you, but - I’m afraid I can’t stay.”

“This isn’t an appointment you can miss,” the man says. He has an American accent and a well-tailored suit, oddly incongruous in this grey, washed-out facsimile of the world Newt just left, and his eyes are gentle. Newt drops his gaze.

“If I don’t,” Newt says, “they’ll hurt her. Kill her. And for what - for justifiably lashing out at the harm they’ve inflicted on her?” His voice sticks in his throat. “No. I really am sorry. But I can’t. Not today.”

The man says, “Newton. Newt,” and Newt looks at him, then at the dragon with her gaze fixed on the approaching wizards. It’ll be a terrible fight, if he stays dead. She won’t ever be free to fly away. Newt purses his mouth, reaches back to his body, and takes his own hand.

Some of the burns scar, and he’s left healing for weeks. But it’s only three days later when he can hobble up to the dragon, this time with the appropriate deference, this time with the proper care, and they don’t keep her in chains again.

* * *

Then there’s a third, when Newt falls afoul of a smuggler keeping thestrals in cages underground. Newt lingers for a while that time, letting the thestrals nudge and nibble at his fingers as he waits for the smuggler to leave his body alone on the cold basement floor. When he sits cross-legged beside his body, half-inside the thestral’s cage, he gestures for the man lurking by the door to do so, too.

The man stays standing, but there’s a resigned quirk to his eyebrows when he says, “Let me guess. Not today?”

“I can’t let them stay here,” Newt says, apologetically. “They’re starving already, and he said he wanted to bleed them - they need food and freedom, not - pain, and torture, and death.”

A thestral nudges him with its starkly beautiful skeletal head, and Newt runs ghostly fingers through its scraggly mane. “I do wish I had something to feed you,” he says to it gently. “You could eat me, of course, but I do need my body to get you out. Perhaps an arm.”

The man sighs. Newt glances up just in time to see the magic he weaves from the air: long, glittering trails of it, strange and ethereal, more primordial and vivid than Newt has ever seen before; his breath catches and he can’t look away. He weaves a song from magic itself, one that resonates with an inescapable thrum along Newt’s bones, and then –

“Here,” the man says, and passes Newt a leg. Deer, quite likely.

Newt says, tentatively, “You could feed them yourself,” but the man is already shaking his head.

“No interference,” he says. “Except for my job.”

The thestrals fall upon the fresh meat like they haven’t eaten in days, and Newt wonders how much longer they’d be here before the man came for them, too. “I’m sorry,” he says. “If I’m causing you trouble. Perhaps next time.”

The man’s expression says what he thinks of that. If Newt’s heart were still beating, he knows his face would warm; as it is, he ducks his head, unable to hide his tentative smile.

“I’m not - causing you trouble. Am I?”

“One soul,” the man says, “doesn’t tip the balance too much.”

“Well,” Newt says, “thank you. I suppose I should go.”

“You’d better, before I change my mind,” the man says, but he’s smiling, and when Newt wakes up he spends a moment lying there, breathing, wondering at the curious ache of his heart.

* * *

The fourth doesn’t leave anyone to blame; a scared, tiny phoenix sets a house aflame. Newt opens his eyes to see the bodies of the dead, a half-dozen wizards who should have known better, and the phoenix chick still burning bright.

“Shh,” he says to it, his voice quiet, and only approaches when he catches its eye. The fire still burns his fingers, even in this world, but Newt cares nothing for it except for the fear in the phoenix’s bright eyes. “I have you,” Newt says, gently. “It will be all right.”

The man isn’t a man, this time, but a spectre - hidden by a cloak, his voice a tremor in the burning dark. He takes the other men, one by one, sings the magic of their death in a tune that sends goosebumps up Newt’s incorporeal spine, and Newt forces himself to look away from the magic he whips up like a whirlwind when the phoenix chick chirps and hops into his hand. Newt says, “He won’t hurt you, dear one,” as he lifts the chick to his shoulder, and the phoenix gives him a beady-eyed stare.

“Or me,” Newt says, belatedly, and looks up to meet the man’s gaze as the last soul fades away. He’s still garbed like Death, obscured under the hood of his cloak dark enough it consumes all light, and tentatively, Newt reaches up and pushes it away. The cloth falls to his shoulders, and he still looks just like a man underneath, the curve of his smile familiar and wry. “Hello,” Newt says. “Ah. I’m afraid - ”

“Yes,” the man says, and raises his eyebrows at the phoenix on Newt’s shoulder. “I don’t think this one will let you go.”

The phoenix chirrups, and Newt smiles at it, feeling terribly fond, even as it looks about to cry. “It’s all right,” he tells it, and bites his lip as he glances at the man again. “I am sorry about the mess.”

“It’s my job. Don’t do that,” the man says, and Newt follows his gaze to the chick hopping awkwardly down his arm, tears beading in its eyes. “In this realm? Really? Oh, for Merlin’s sake - ”

Newt doesn’t have breath in his lungs, doesn’t have blood in his veins, but he feels like he does when the man takes his hand. The burns across his fingers hurt, but they’re nothing worse than he’s had before, and he opens his mouth to say it when the man meets his gaze and says, “Please.”

Newt manages, “Oh.”

His body resonates with it, his soul; the man’s magic seeps into him with the lightest finesse, the touch of it like a gentle caress. Newt feels - not precisely alive with it, but it’s nothing like he’s imagined death.

But Death is just a person, a man who looks at him with a gaze that makes Newt feel breathless though he doesn’t need air, who smiles and always lets him go. Newt’s never feared him, not really, but he doesn’t know what to make of the way he looks forward to seeing him, the way he can’t help but wonder if Death feels the same.

It doesn’t seem so absurd, here, in this world away from life. The man smooths his palm over Newt’s fingers and says, “All healed.” His touch is gentle, and Newt aches for it as soon as it’s gone.

“Thank you.” And then, because he can’t stop himself, Newt adds, “Is there - a name you prefer to be called?”

“The way you see me,” the man says, and studies the lines across his palms. “It was once a man named Percival Graves. That will do.”

“Then - thank you, Mr Graves.”

“Percival, at least,” the man - Percival - says, and he quirks an eyebrow at the phoenix chick preening himself on Newt’s shoulder. “That one will mess with the balance of things, staying here too long. You shouldn’t let him boss you around.”

Newt glances at him, smiling. “What do you think I should call him?”

“Oh,” Percival says, “he has a name. Phoenixes always do. You’ll know it when he deigns to tell you.”

The phoenix is named Fawkes, but Newt doesn’t find out for years. It leaves him with a knowing look at his Transfiguration Professor’s office door.

* * *

And there’s a sixth, a seventh, an eighth. Newt doesn’t mean to get into trouble as much as he does, but his research is often perilous at best, occasionally deadly at worst. He spends an hour telling Percival about the mating habits of nundus as one continues to sit on his cooling body on the floor, until Percival takes it upon himself to shift her; he flits in and out on the ninth, fighting to get a grounded thunderbird free.

And on the tenth, he falls to his knees and wishes for magic, for power, for understanding - for anything that will let a broken little girl live once more. There’s nothing in magic without a cost, and the first thing Newt says to him is, “One life, for the balance.”

Percival says, “Newt.”

“One life,” Newt says, “one soul - I’ll come with you, if you’ll just - ”

Percival closes his eyes.

He wraps his arms around Newt, and holds him until Newt’s directionless anger has spent, until all his tears have dried. “You know it was too late,” he says, as quiet as a grave, and Newt presses his lips together, tight.

“I know,” he says. “I know.”

And then there’s New York.

A man walks the streets there wearing Percival’s face, holding an actual job in real life. No one thinks this strange apart from Newt, disquieted to the core by this person who isn’t the one he knows, harder and sharper like an ill-fitting veneer over an almost-familiar life.

The truth comes out eventually, and Newt dies in his sleep to a lingering unchecked curse and wakes to Percival’s face. His head is tilted in clear invitation, his hand outstretched, and Newt says, “Oh, but I shouldn’t - ”

“It’s not that,” Percival says, impatiently. “You captured him, didn’t you? Come on.”

Newt slips his fingers between Percival’s, Percival’s palm warm against his own. The Goldstein’s spare bedroom whirls in a disconcerting way around him, and when Newt opens his eyes, unsure as to when he closed them, they’re in the bowels of MACUSA, outside a well-guarded cell.

Grindelwald is in there, looking at nothing until Percival steps forward - and then his mismatched gaze snap to him, unfocused, and he smiles. Percival stops directly in front of him, and when Grindelwald looks up, he meets his eyes.

Newt can’t tell what happens, then. It could be nothing but for the building magic in the air, the tingle to his skin, electric like the air before a storm; it could be nothing but for the way Percival’s expression falls blank and flat, his eyes dark and distant, and when Newt takes a step forward it feels like he’s moving through an impedimenta hex until he lays a hand on Percival’s arm.

Newt says, “Percival - ”

It dissipates in a flash as quick as lightning, though Newt still feels the aftershocks of it like goosebumps along his skin. Percival breathes out and looks at him, eyebrows raised slightly. Newt says, tentatively, “Are you all right?”

“I’ve been worse,” Percival says, and slides a disgusted look at the man chained to the floor. “At least this bastard will die alone. I…”

“I don’t need to know,” Newt says, and Percival’s mouth pulls up into a faint, wry smile.

“That’s why I’ll tell you,” he says, and tilts his head. “One more trip, I think. I don’t want to do this here.”

He takes Newt’s hand, again, and this time Newt closes his eyes. He doesn’t know if they go far; it could be anywhere, this place, a neat, empty kitchen and a table with two chairs, clean but impersonal with no extraneous decorations, not even a picture on the wall. Percival doesn’t look out of place, in this scraped sterile room, but neither does he look particularly at home.

Newt feels the urge to make tea when he gingerly takes a seat, but thinks it would taste like ashes in his mouth. “You lived here,” Newt says.

Percival says, “Yes. Once.”

He doesn’t take the opposite seat, just stands there still, and Newt wonders if he’d fade into this lonely, grey world, lose himself to the white-painted walls. Newt bites his lip and reaches out, palm-up: “Whatever happened,” he says, “Percival. You’re not alone.”

Percival takes his hand, the spark of his touch through Newt’s nerves like magic; like life. “I was captured, here,” he says, “or the person I was. It was a curse - old, even by my memory, used to erase someone from existence, until no scrap of who they were remains - ”

He cuts himself off, shaking his head. Newt says, “You’re here, now.”

“The first time doesn’t count,” Percival says, and his mouth pulls tight. “And - I’d done some of my own reading. I made a deal. A soul for a soul. A life for a life.”

“Do you regret it?” Newt asks, quietly, and Percival studies him as though he can see everything Newt’s ever done.

“I regret many things,” he admits, “but not you.”

He’s close, startlingly warm, terribly alive. Newt leans forward, but at the last moment Percival turns his face aside. Newt’s kiss lands on the corner of his smile, and Percival sets a finger to Newt’s lips when he starts to open his mouth.

“It’s not time, for you,” Percival says. “Isn’t that what you always say?”

Newt says, hopelessly, “But you - ”

“Go, Newt Scamander,” Percival says, “live your life. Publish that book you’re always talking about, and however many revisions may come. Fall in love. Meet every creature you’ve heard of, and dozens more, and tell everyone in the Wizarding World about how to take care of them, so they won’t die needlessly - ”

Newt says, “Percival.”

“And when the time comes,” Percival says, relentlessly even, “after all of that - ”

“I won’t forget,” Newt says. “I can’t.”

Percival’s careful smile sets Newt’s frozen heart alight. “Just be more careful with it,” he says. “I don’t want to see you again. Not until the end.”

“Not today,” Newt says. “Yes. All right.”

Newt closes his eyes. He feels a breath across his lips, the faintest touch with the intoxicating pull of Percival’s magic, drawing him on. But Newt clings to it, his unspoken vow: not today, he thinks, and gasps back to life.

* * *

And so, Newt lives. He writes his book, he falls in love, he travels the world and saves every forgotten creature and updates his book a dozen, two dozen times. Whenever he takes another expedition, Theseus says, “Be careful,” and Newt does, every time.

“The first time doesn’t count,” Newt reminds him, when he casts a critical look at Newt’s new scars, and Theseus shakes his head on a laugh.

“Come on, Newt,” he says, “don’t you remember? You’ve already used it up.”

In a rush, Newt does: a child’s accidental Apparition, a hippogriff startled into kicking out. He’d spent hours trying to comfort the poor thing as his body slowly bled out on the floor. Newt says, “I suppose I have.” His voice comes out quiet, strange, and he doesn’t lose the odd feeling in his chest even as he manages a smile.

There are dozens of schoolchildren who send him letters, and Newt eventually sets aside an hour each day to sit down by the fire and answer them, one by one. There’s a half-giant child, his letters clumsy but his enthusiasm unparalleled; later, a Muggleborn girl, curious and clever, who mentions Fawkes and the Headmaster’s name. The boy grows, has an incident and stays with Newt until he’s invited back to live at Hogwarts, his first and favourite home; the girl grows, and joins in the effort to fight a war.

Newt’s started to feel the ache of wear and time in his bones. The girl sends him a photograph, once: her and her husband and their child, all of them unaccountably young, smiling with all the brightness of hope. Though Newt’s never lost it, the urge to travel, the curiosity of new knowledge, he still wonders sometimes when he’ll be able to let go.

People die, as people do. War is indiscriminate that way, and Newt has already lived through two.

He doesn’t hear of the girl’s death from a letter, but celebrations in the streets; the child survives, they say. The first time doesn’t count, except for when it should. The funeral is a ceremony, but weeks later, there’s nothing there but a memory encased in stone.

It’s a cold winter, and Newt buries his hands in the faltering heating charms on his coat as he walks, boots crunching in the snow. There are flowers on their graves still, wilting as the preservation charms fall. Newt sets his own conjured flowers down against the stone, and though he feels eyes on him he doesn’t look up until Percival says, quietly, “Hello.”

Newt says, “It’s a life for a life, isn’t it?”

Percival doesn’t look any different, Newt sees when he straightens. His own hair has gone white long ago, but Percival is an image frozen in time, down to the line of his winter coat, the fond tilt of his smile. “Is that what you want, Newt?” he says, and holds out his hand. He’s not wearing gloves, but when Newt takes it, his fingers are warm.

“Yes,” Newt says. “I do think it’s time.”

It’s not a sudden shift, or at all a surprise. The colour leeches from the world like a painting in the rain, and Newt looks briefly up into the darkening sky. “What - happens, now?” he asks, feeling strangely vulnerable, and he feels - younger, sounds it, like that idealistic young man he once was. That perhaps, he’s always been.

Percival says, “Now, you come with me. And I lead you on.”

There’s nothing but a quiet resignation in his voice, and Newt searches his face for something, anything - a reason to the feel of his heart in his chest, the shiver of Percival’s magic over his skin. Newt says, “And if I want to - ”

“I do,” Percival says, sounding slightly bemused, “have a job to do.”

Newt says, “I’m sorry,” and bites his lip, suddenly unable to repress his smile. “I’m not sure about all this. Not today.”

“Newt,” Percival says, confused and half-chiding, and Newt steps forward, winds his fingers in Percival’s ridiculous hair and kisses him. This grey world sharpens, his heartbeat pounds, and then Percival relents, sets his hands on Newt’s hips and kisses him thoroughly back.

It’s the first time. Newt won’t let it be the last.

“You do have to leave,” Percival says, against Newt’s mouth, when Newt has to stop to breathe. “Newt - ”

“No,” Newt says. “Not today.”


End file.
